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Comment by rjzzleep | Hacker News Reader

1. SEO. I've been recommended to have a ghostwriter write technical articles for me to increase my client base. Build enough of a cult following and you can be sure that your youtube channel, or next book has enough of an audience.

2. I think it also appeals to a certain audience. It makes them feel open minded to other cultures. There's an emotional bond forming with the story or the people in the story.

Don't forget that the average american speaks only one language, yet considers themselves as part of the country that is creating/keeping world peace and that at the same time the average american consumer spends more on average on consumer goods per capita than any other nation in the world. Add to that, that ad revenue is the US is also disproportionately higher than anywhere else.

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I have literally never met anyone express (2). Any time anyone needs a recipe site they immediately start complaining about it, unprompted.

Smitten Kitchen often has a few paragraphs before the recipe. I don't always read it, but I also don't hate it.

It helps she writes well and it seems to genuinely reflect the author's life--I think it started out as a personal blog with occasional recipes before becoming a recipe site with bloggy bits bolted on. The text is also fairly helpful, in that it sometimes describes less successful attempts cooking the same thing, or compares it with other dishes ("If you hate X, try [this] instead").

This may be a rare exception though--I agree that a lot of other recipe sites have tons of vacuous filler.

Smitten Kitchen was one of the OG food blogs that established the pattern that recipe spam websites are trying to emulate. Back in the aughts, searching for a recipe on Google was useful because they would prioritize "enriched" sites like Smitten Kitchen, David Lebovitz's blog, Orangette, The Wednesday Chef, etc., where the narrative portion of the recipe primarily established who the recipe would appeal to, tips on unusual techniques employed in the recipe, and sometimes a humanizing anecdote or two.

The format of Smitten Kitchen and David Lebovitz's blog have remained unchanged for about 15 years, probably because those authors used the success of their blogs to establish related revenue streams (mostly via bestselling cookbooks). I would be surprised if the blogs themselves still make much money, given how few display ads are included on each page.

I sometimes like to read the paragraphs to know why some things are done and possible substitutions, specially if I'm not going to make the recipe immediately. But when I want to make it, I really would love to have it separated from the text.

My wife and I collect cookbooks and cocktail recipe books. There are a handful of writers who have a compelling voice where I read more than just the ingredient list and instructions.

But for some random blog that I find while googling? Never.

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